Bostoner Torah Insights: Bostoner ‘Chassidus’ in English and Hebrew: Pesach – 15-21 Nissan 5786
Bostoner Torah Insights - Yerushalayim
Bostoner Torah Insights
Bostoner ‘Chassidus’ in English
Pesach – 15-21 Nissan 5786
Bostoner Rebbe shlit’a – Yerushalayim
Secretariat Email: bosto...@gmail.com
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Klal Yisroel will soon gather to celebrate Yetziyas Mitzrayim on Seder night. As we recite the Haggadah, we declare: ברוך שומר הבטחתו לישראל שחישב את הקץ — “Blessed is He Who kept His promise to Yisroel by calculating the ketz.”
This is commonly understood to mean that although the decree of Bris Bein HaBetarim foretold 400 years, HaKadosh Baruch Hu did not begin counting from the descent of Yaakov and the seventy souls into Mitzrayim—which lasted only 210 years—but rather from the birth of Yitzchak.
However, this raises a well-known question: if the calculation was indeed fulfilled from the time of Yitzchak, why do some commentaries suggest that our present galus serves to complete the years that were “missing” from Galus Mitzrayim?
Additionally, Chazal teach that in Mitzrayim, women merited to give birth to six children in a single pregnancy. This phenomenon seems difficult to understand. Even under normal circumstances, the population growth would have been extraordinary. If each family produced ten children per generation, the numbers would increase tenfold every 25 years. Beginning with 70 individuals, the population would grow to 700 after 25 years, 7,000 after 50 years, 70,000 after 75 years, and 700,000 after 100 years. Assuming half were male, there would already be 350,000 males at that point. Continuing this progression, the numbers would reach into the millions and beyond within the remaining years.
If so, why was there any need for a miraculous increase in birth rate?
Even when factoring in the teaching of Chazal on the word Chamushim in Parshas Beshalach—that only one-fifth of Bnei Yisroel left Mitzrayim (with other opinions suggesting one-fiftieth or even one out of five hundred)—the numbers still seem sufficient through natural growth alone. A simple calculation shows that reaching 600,000 adult males at the time of the Exodus would not appear to require such extraordinary means.
Perhaps the answer lies in a deeper understanding of the phrase “שחישב את הקץ”—that HaKadosh Baruch Hu “calculated the end.” The 600,000 souls who stood at Har Sinai to receive the Torah were destined to emerge over a 400-year period. However, since Klal Yisroel left Mitzrayim 190 years earlier than expected, all of those souls had to be brought into the world within a much shorter span of time.
This would explain the necessity for a miraculous increase in births: not merely to grow the population, but to ensure that all the destined neshamos would be present at Yetziyas Mitzrayim and stand together at Har Sinai to receive the Torah.
The Sfas Emes (on Shabbos HaGadol 5656) touches upon the Midrash’s question regarding the transition from 400 years to 210 years, offering further depth to this idea.
May we merit to be among those neshamos destined to greet Moshiach, as the Midrash teaches that the neshamos of the Dor HaMidbar will return in the generation of Moshiach.--